United States Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General ...

Resources and OrganizationWe assessed the work for this Annual Plan relative to the resources that we believe will beavailable to accomplish it. Because the FY 2013 funding level is not yet certain, the Annual Planmay need to be adjusted during the year to reflect any resource constraints. Appendix Bdescribes our current organizational structure and functional responsibilities; these also couldchange during the year should resource levels change.FY 2013 Work PlanA summary of the work we plan in support of our FY 2013 strategic goals follows.Goal 1 – Strengthen USDA’s ability to implement safety and securitymeasures to protect the public health as well as agricultural andDepartmental resources.We expect to use approximately 10 percent of our audit and 7 percent of our investigativeresources in achieving this goal. 1 Our investigations work focuses on threats to the food supply,the agricultural sector, USDA employees, and national security. Our audit work focuses onassessing management control systems designed to ensure that the Department is effectivelyprotecting the consumer and the Nation’s agricultural resources. Our audit work will alsoconcentrate on homeland security and will continue to evaluate the Department’s coordinationand communication of increased security controls both internally and across FederalDepartments. For FY 2013, our priorities include the following:· Follow up on prior audits of the Food Safety and Inspection Service’s (FSIS) food safetyinitiatives to determine if the agency has made improvements in: staffing, training, andsupervising in-plant inspectors; oversight of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act;removing specified-risk materials; and information system management controls.· Evaluate FSIS’ implementation of its Public Health Information System (PHIS) whenconducting domestic inspections. Assess FSIS’ pilot projects for the collection ofestablishment profile data for food safety systems, operations, and demographics.· Investigate threats involving the safety of meat, poultry, and egg products to ensure thattimely response and appropriate corrective actions are taken to protect the public fromfood tampering or tainted food.· Assess the effectiveness of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s (APHIS)Plant Protection and Quarantine Preclearance Program in detecting and eradicatingproblematic pests and plants. Determine if APHIS has facilitated safe trade practices,including monitoring the movement of risk material.1 While all OIG teams contribute to each goal, we can currently quantify and project only the audit and investigationresources employed.